vorgarten
um zu erfahren, wie das jetzt genau im fall von A LOVE SUPREME ablief, müsste man ashley kahn im schrank stehen haben, was bei mir nicht der fall ist.
What Van Gelder recorded that evening was set in stone. How each instrument sounded relative to the others, how each was heard within the audio environment created by the room and by Van Gelder’s volume levels, could never be altered:
All of them were two-track recordings, which eliminated any possibility of mixing later. The advantages of doing one or two tunes at a time in a direct-to-two-track mode allowed me to concentrate more on the balance, mix and overall sound. Yes, we could edit between takes, but we couldn’t change the balance. [Rudy Van Gelder, fax to author]
In 1964, Van Gelder recorded in stereo; a reel-to-reel machine moving at 15 ips (inches per second) recorded the master copies for later editing and then mastering (the creation of the acetate platter that creates stamps for manufacturing vinyl albums). In the interest of maintaining some degree of isolation between the instruments on the master recording, the engineer opted to separate saxophone and drums as much as possible. A close listen to the surviving copies of the master tapes reveals Coltrane at „hard left“ – positioned all the way on the left channel – Jones „hard right,“ Tyner’s piano centred between the two, and Garrison’s bass at right-center.
„I am certain there was no mixing involved – that is, mixing from a multitrack tape after the original sessions were recorded,“ noted Kevin Reeves, a mastering engineer at Universal Music with hands-on familiarity with most of the Impulse tape library, having mastered dozens of tapes for reissue. „One could accurately say that A Love Supreme was a ‚live to two-track‘ recording.“ Reeves points out that such separation, though minimal by today’s standards, enabled Van Gelder „to maximize the effectiveness of any enhancement – EQ [equalization, the balancing of different frequency ranges], or processing – that would take place in disc cutting – mastering“:There are only three possible degrees of separation on the master tape that we no use: those elements that are panned to the left, those to the right, and those in the center. With Rudy’s stereo spectrum the way it is, he would be able to enhance the equalization on just the left side – where Trane’s signal is – without adversely affecting Elvin, and the same goes for Elvin on the right. And if he wanted to enhance McCoy’s parts, he would invoke an equalization on both left and right channels that would mostly affect the music panned center – which would, to a lesser extent, also affect Elvin and Coltrane as well. [Kevin Reeves, email to author, January 25, 2002.*]
As was his practice, Van Gelder „would run a master tape and a copy for [Coltrane] to take home.“ While recording the master tapes, as Van Gelder notes, „I made [lower-quality] 7 1/2 ips mono tapes for all clients, so they could play back the session.“ Normally, „client“ would denote the record company paying for the session; that Coltrane was allowed to keep the mono reels containing a full record of the session, including all false starts and outtakes, was another privilege [Bob] Thiele [Produzent von Coltrane und Chef von Impulse ab 1962] granted his banner artist.
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*) dazu gibt es in den Endnoten (hier Team Fussnoten!), die ich in eckigen Klammern schon ergänzt habe, noch eine Fortsetzung:Reeves continues: „It is my guess, not having been granted permission to see the actual console, that Rudy did his equalization on the tracks on the channels of his board, each channel having its own set of processing knows for equalization. Trane’s mic had one channel, Elvin’s another, and so on. Rudy would likely try and maximize each sound on each of these channels ‚on the way in,‘ knowing that there would be no opportunity to go back and separately tweak each channel – as one would do if recording to a multitrack instead of live to two-track. Following that logic, that may also explain why Rudy chose to put Trane on one side of the room and Elvin on the other – to minimize the leakage from one mic to the other. Of course, with the advent of both the multitrack recorder and the isolation booth, these issues of separation are rarely broached by young engineers of today, and I fear that the fine art and skill of the ‚live to two-track‘ session has been lost.“ (S. 233)
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Ashley Kahn: A Love Supreme. The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album. New York: Penguin Books, 2003 (erste Ausgabe: Viking Press, 2002), S. 85f.
Am Ende gibt es übrigens ein virtuelles Septett – Coltrane war mit dem Schluss von „Psalm“ unzufrieden, Van Gelder erklärte die Optionen, Coltrane, Garrison und Jones gingen nochmal aus dem Kontrollraum ins Studio, das Masterband wurde zurückgespult und sie ergänzten einen zweiten Part (Coltrane nun im rechten Kanal).
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #152: Enja Record, 1971-1973 – 14.05., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba